Lake Bunyonyi
Eco-Village
Our challenges:
Wild life conservatioN
The Lake Bunyonyi is home to more than 300 of birds’ species. Nature destruction is a menace to their survival. We want to make everything in our power to protect these species.
Promotion of culture
The African world in general is heavily influenced by copying occidental ways of living. We want to support our cultural roots by perpetuating local traditions of dancing, singing, fishing, canoe making, crafts’ making, medicinal herbs, cooking, etc.
Promotion of responsible agriculture
99% of the population of the lake Bunyonyi are peasant and live from their culture. There are many bad practices such as heavy deforestation that harms the biodiversity. This also present a risk for the community because the soils are not maintained by trees anymore which could cause massive erosion. Other economies are also exporting many chemicals and seeds to Africa that poison our soils. We need to make people aware of these issues and encourage them to practice ecologic agriculture.
Promotion of international brotherhood
We believe other cultures could help us grow and improve. That is why we like to host volunteers, in order to get different viewpoints, discover new methods and come up with innovative solutions. On top of that welcoming strangers is a way to broaden our network and get to know abut other initiatives, new support opportunities and axes of development. In our organization we are about to build a “RUKUNDO EGUMEHO”, ("one love" in Rukiga language) center to welcome international brothers and sisters.
Poverty eradication
Our communities are very poor, some families live with only 1 or 2 dollars per month. Unemployment is very high, in our community for example we have about 90% of people unemployed. Among the 10% who are employed, we have 3 teachers, 1 doctor for the 200 people of our community. Therefore, we need to find alternative survival methods like collaborative gardens, community money or other kind of exchange means that could allow families and orphans to survive.
Defense of women rights and family peace
Women have a very hard life here and many of them drop out of school because of elementary hygiene reasons, because they are not supported for dealing with their periods. For the orphans especially, this is a huge challenge because they do not have their mother to help them go through this natural milestone in their life. Women are also sometime mistreated at home. Due to lack of education, young age at marriage, high number of children, also alcoholism sometimes, the families are not at peace and the women and children are usually the victims of family dramas. There is lots of social work to do in these cases, the family members need support and education in order to live more peacefully with one another.
ABOUT US
Our Story:
My name is Isaac ad I am the founder of the Lake Bunyonyi Eco-Village. I have started the project together with my brother Joshua and a dozen of organization members from our family and friends who helped us with our initiative.
I grew up at the lake Bunyonyi and I feel very close to my family, community and our natural environment at the lake. At some point, I realized that our environment was endangered by pollution and bad exploitation of resources: our environment was at risk of destruction. We could observe many causes of this destruction: more and more people coming from conventional mass tourism, plastic waste being abandoned in the nature, deforestation, water pollution, etc.
I studied tourism and I have always felt the desire to start an activity that preserves the nature, supports the community and contributes to spread love. I believe I inherited the genes from my grandfather who had a heart of giving and loving. I grew up with adopted brothers and sisters in a loving family. In the 1990s I met many orphans at school and I felt a huge difference with them in the way they had not received love in their lives and how lack of love affects people. This strengthened my desire to create something that would help people.
I started the activity with 3.000 shillings in my pocket (this is less than 1 USD). I bought a pen and some paper. I planned to build houses on the land that had been given to my family by my grandfather. I needed to get a job and started a conventional job for 20 USD per month. I soon realized this would not make my dream come true as it was just enough for my own survival. Then I started selling handmade baskets from my mother. I never lost my dream and I started to meet different people, visit other projects, make more and more plans. Some people wanted to support me and donated books and pencils.
The foundation was set. Environment protection and ecology was the first axis of development. I wanted to offer cheap tourism opportunities in a traditional manner, in the nature. The first milestones were the yoga area, then we started to build houses, one per year at the beginning. Now I feel the foundations of our village are very strong and we can get much further in the future.
Our MISSIONS:
Environment preservation
We started the project as a small club to make our friends and neighbors aware about the need for environment’s protection. We were teaching people more responsible methods of planting trees, fruits and vegetables as well as how to dispose of plastic wastes. The goal was to educate everyone living at the lake about ways of living and working that respect our environment.
Orphans’ protection
We also realized that many orphan children are suffering from the worst life conditions, being left alone, sometimes tortured. They are lacking everything and most of them cannot go to school. We believe that hildren are the future, and therefore we strive to take care of them by welcoming them at the eco-village and provide them with education. The community appreciates and supports our engagement because they recognize how crucial children are for the future of the communities. We are currently working with orphans under the status of the Lake Bunyonyi Eco-Village Organization, but our ambition is to build an official dedicated NGO that we will call the “New life orphanage”.
Eco-tourism
As part of our mission we also started to encourage eco-tourism by welcoming tourists at our eco-village. People who want to experience a natural and ecologic experience are welcome to visit us for a retreat in our eco-cottages at the lake and in our tree-house in the forest, as well as for natural and traditional leisure activities. We organize trekking sessions on the mountain, gardening lessons, survival skills sessions in the forest, visits of the leopard cave, boat and canoe trips, yoga classes and traditional dancing classes.
On top of that, we promote international communication by welcoming volunteers from all over the world. We want to learn from other cultures and meet people who are willing to help us in our projects. In this regard we offer volunteering programs in the areas of environment, orphans’ caring and education. Volunteers are free to choose the area(s) in which they prefer to help us. They can join an existing project or suggest new projects that would add value to our organization. We are open-minded and believe we can benefit from meeting new people, by discussing and working together for a better future.
We received already some help from the outside and we started to grow a good network of people. We want to develop more and more relationships and activities as the challenges we face are very serious.
